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Hitler Stopped By Franco

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Many have the true notion that Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco craftily prevented his Civil War ally Adolf Hitler from marching 20 divisions through Spain in World War II and occupying British controlled Gibraltar. This prevented the Axis from sealing off the western end of the Mediterranean and made a major contribution to ultimate Allied victory.

What many may, however, learn for the first time in the Jane and Bert Boyars' 2001 documentary novel HITLER STOPPED BY FRANCO is that Franco also got away with provoking Hitler by his bold assistance to Jews.

An introductory quote (p. 104): "The Sephardim, Jews of Spain and Portugal, had not seen Spain since Ferdinand and Isabella had expelled them in 1492 after giving them the opportunity to remain by becoming true Catholics."

Franco's positive attitude towards Jews is at least six years older than Hitler's 1933 rise to power in Germany. As early as 1927 as a fighting Colonel commanding thousands of men in Spanish Morocco, Francisco Franco received permission from Madrid to use his troops to protect from Muslims the local Sephardic Jews. The Sephardic community was grateful and in 1936 supported Franco with money at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1927 Spanish dictator Primo de Rivera had also told Franco that Sephardic Jews might return to Spain, become citizens and worship as they pleased. This invitation was deep in Franco's memory when, in 1940, French Jews began beseeching Spanish authorities in Vichy France for asylum on the basis of Spanish citizenship. (p. 104)

As told by Franco's wife to the authors, Franco then briefly but decisively mulled over what to do. "...I have sworn to give my life protecting Spaniards." (p. 105)

After prayer, Franco authorized issuing Spanish passports to Sephardim as their right under Spanish law. Asked by consular officials how to tell Sephardim from non-Sephardim, Franco ruled, "They are all Sephardim."

By September 1940 Hitler was pressuring Franco to cede to Germany one of the Canary Islands and to allow the Wehrmacht to march on Gibraltar through Spain. (p.106)

By November 1940 Hitler told Serrano Suner, Franco's brother-in-law, that he had at the moment 186 inactive German divisions and he intended to use some of them to take Gibraltar. Nor had he failed to notice Franco's Jewish policy. "Spanish passports are being issued to Jews who have never seen Spain, nor have their ancestors in precisely 448 years. ... Suddenly French are Spanish. And from Poland suddenly Poles are Spaniards. And in Denmark and the Netherlands ... overnight my enemies have Spanish passports and are able to leave my jurisdiction." (p. 159)

And leave they did. Nor did Jews ever forget that Franco was their benefactor. For the rest of this little known story -- and for much more-- read HITLER STOPPED BY FRANCO.

-OOO-

All of which brings us to the Boyars' excellent historical novel. Having lived in Spain for nearly thirty
years and become friends with folks like their landlady, Franco's daughter, Carmen, they found both
Franco's Spain and Franco's reputation in Spain to be much different within the country than they were
perceived from without. With such connections, the authors were given extraordinary access to
members of Franco's family and inner circle and to former government ministers. They have
combined this access with what was obviously quite extensive research to produce a scrupulously
documented (how often have you read a novel with citations and footnotes) account of how Franco
kept Spain out of the War, focussing on the years from 1940 to 1943, when Spanish acquiescence to
Hitler's demands would have allowed Axis forces to use the Spanish coast as a staging area for an attack
on Gibraltar and eventually complete control of the Mediterranean and North Africa.

The weaknesses of the book are mostly a function of the task it is trying to perform. Characters are
required to recite large chunks of historical background, which is obviously artificial and somewhat
pedantic, but is also probably the most effective way of conveying the necessary information (it is
certainly less disruptive than the technique that Herman Wouk used in Winds of War, where he
interspersed chapters of an imaginary history of WWII). And in almost every instance, the authors
give Franco the benefit of the doubt in regards to his motivations and the farsightedness of his vision.
This creates the impression, which even I find unlikely, that he never seriously considered joining the
Axis and intended all along to simply hold Hitler at bay until America joined the War and swung the
balance of power.

On the other hand, Franco has been treated so viciously by almost every other author (H. G. Wells
called him the "murderous little Christian gentleman"), that it's hard to begrudge one overly favorable
treatment. Moreover, it is entirely plausible that Franco, who had after all fought to preserve a
traditional Spain, based on Church, Crown, and commerce, never seriously intended to allow the Nazis
a free hand in Spain. No true patriot, which Franco must by any measure be considered, would fight
off the Comintern only to put his nation at the disposal of the National Socialists.

Meanwhile, the books strengths are significant. First, there is a very real tension to the story, even
though we know its outcome, as this small and recently wartorn nation holds off Hitler, who is perched
on their border just waiting to pounce. Second, there's the fascination of seeing people like Franco and
Canaris presented as three dimensional beings and as genuine heroes in the resistance to Hitler, rather
than as enemies of humanity, simply because they too were fascists. Finally, books that challenge our
precious preconceived versions of events are so rare that it is always a good thing when one, especially
a really good one, comes along.

This is an unusual history book written in the format of a novel. This makes the book very readable and presents the historical figures in a more lifelike way than the usual dry history books. The material for this book is drawn from historical records, documents, and interviews with surviving members of Franco's family and retired officials of the Spanish government.

I have always wondered why Franco and Spain did not enter the war on the side of the Axes and this book gives a good answer: Franco was for the survival of Spain. Spain had just ended a savage civil war with over one million dead. The country's infrastructure was on the verge of collapse and the population was on the brink of starvation. Spain owed huge debts and the army did not have the equipment or supplies to enter any conflict. Franco had to seem to favor the Axis and played a very dangerous game with Hitler, keeping him believing that as soon as possible, Spain would enter the war. Franco was a cleaver fox and knew how to play the game of words as a means of delay.

Hitler badly wanted Gibraltar and Franco refused to let him move troops through Spain to capture it. Enraged, Hitler moved 20 divisions of the German Army to the Spanish border, but Franco refused to be intimidated. He moved his own troops to the border and poured concrete bunkers (Spain had no shortage of concrete) and threatened Hitler with guerrilla war. Hitler realized that it would be too costly to wage that kind of war and backed off, eventually having to withdraw his army for use against the Russians.

If Franco had allied Spain with the Axis and given Hitler the doorway to the Mediterranean, the results would have been disastrous for the Allies. Franco did us a huge favor by remaining neutral and keeping his country from German occupation.

This book is wonderful in so many ways. May I start out by pointing a fault in a previous review on this site. One gentlemen, who accused Franco of being a Fascist butcher (which is shall address later), stated rather frankly that Franco caused the War and that he was responsible to the damage to Spain. May I remind the audience that it takes 2 sides to fight a war, and at this point in history such an event was unstoppable. His bias shows clearly in his last line:

"One last thing. Hitler wasn't stopped by this man. He was stopped by the Red Army in the Eastern Front."

Such a view is highly popular amongst socialists, communists, Slavophil's, and anti-US/UK "historians", and for a brief period in time, me. However this view doesn't hold up to well in today's historical outlook, and while I shall not go into it, use it to point out that this man was clearly not an objective source.

As far as the book is concerned I must first say that I was very excited to read it. As someone who has studied the Second World War a great deal, I was looking forward to the historical and strategic significance of Franco's non-belligerency and later neutrality. What I found was that and more, and indeed found myself gripped to the story like a Tom Clancy spy novel. The character of Canaris was highly intriguing, and really opened my mind to his role as head of the Abwher. Even if you have reservations about Franco, this book can still be enjoyed for its literary style and plotline.

As far as Franco being a Fascist, this statement is certainly biased and simply not accurate. See Prof. Stanley Payne's "Fascism 1914-1945" in which the world's foremost expert on Fascist history and ideology can surmise that Franco's regime was only "semi-Fascist" at best. I would perhaps go even farther then that and deduce Franco's was not Fascist at all, but rather a neo-Monarchist/Authoritarian which did not have the mass appeal or totalitarian control that Italian Fascism or German National Socialism had. Furthermore I'd like to briefly comment that both sides committed atrocities in the Spanish Civil War, and from a military standpoint it makes sense to execute POW's if you do not have facilities to house them (which Franco did not have until years after the war.) If the Nationalists had lost, I do not think the Republic would have been able to stop the Loyalist forces from doing likewise to the Nationalists'. Remember, War is an ugly business, and considering how many civilians were killed in Allied Air raids during the Second World War, sometimes as hard as it is we must look past the death tolls.

This book is not bias, and it is not pro-Franco, despite I'm sure the attack it takes from Europe's ever increasing socialist population. It does not deny the thousands who Franco condemned to death during and after the war, but it does not chastise him for it as so many historians duo. It is objective, which in their mind is as good as bias, simply because it examines that Franco God-forbid saved 60,000 Jewish lives and played a major strategic role in beating the Nazi's duo to a Second World War no-no: inactivity.

So did Franco really stop Hitler? It's not as farfetched as it seams. The truth is for a good period of time after the fall of France and into Operation Barbarossa a 250,000 man German Army sat inactive at the Pyrenees either waiting to enter Spain or invade it. Such an allocation of military material could have greatly helped the Russian front, where infantry was needed to tie down pockets of resistance while the Panzer's streaked towards Moscow. Ironically, 240 years earlier Napoleon found himself in a similar "Spanish Ulcer" with 250,000 men, and was unable to force a conclusion to his Russian campaign. If Germany had occupied Spain Gibraltar would have fallen for sure, and the Allied landings at TOURCH may could have been cut off or worse, diverted to Spain, where the green recruits of the American Army would have surely been cut down by the combination of Whermacht experience and Spanish zeal.

Of course these are all hypothetical, but what is true is Franco saved some 60,000 Jews from the camps. As someone who has been to concentration camps and worked closely with the Jewish population of my city, this is something that touched me deeply. Hitler Stopped by Franco is recommended for anyone who wished to open their minds a learn more about a man, a cause, and a side of the Second World War not seen on the Big Screen.

Hitler Stopped By Franco is the true and documented history of how, in 1939, the Spanish Fascist General Franco prevented Adolf Hitler from moving 20 divisions of the German Wehrmacht out of Spain for three years and defied him (at great risk) by providing 60,000 Jews with refuge and asylum in Spain while the Nazi Holocaust was in full sway throughout the rest of German occupied Europe. Franco is not a popular figure in the west. The Russians hated him because he was unrelentingly anti-Communist and defeated the socialist coalitions in the Spanish Civil War. The Americans didn't like him because of his suppressive and oppressive regime. But with the quiet support of Admiral Wilhem Canaris (Germany's highest ranking spy) Franco successfully fended off Hitler's urgent demands to let German troops occupy Spain as a path to Gibraltar and thereby close off the Mediterranean to British shipping. A fact that played large in the Allied defeat of German and Italian forces in North Africa and the Mediterranean. Hitler Stopped By Franco is very highly recommended reading for students of World War II and will do much to reveal Franco, while an unabashed totalitarian fascist, was no friend of Adolf Hitler, and a stalwart benefactor of the Jews the Nazis had marked for extermination.

Having been raised with the "conventional" wisdom of World War II, I always thought of Franco as a bad guy given the involvement of the Italians and Germans on his side in the Spanish Civil War. This book opened my eyes to the plight of the Spaniards after the Civil War, and the amazing juggling act Franco pulled off to keep Spain out of the war. Franco showed tremendous courage and ingenuity to resist the incredible pressure brought to bear by the Germans to bring Spain into the war, which would have allowed German troops to pass through Spain and capture Gibraltar. The German capture of Gibraltar in 1940 would have had catastrophic implications for the British and allowed the Germans to dominate the Mediterranean and Northern Africa. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in World War II, and congratulate the authors for bringing this little known story to light.

This novel of historical fiction begins with some very absurd scenarios. The Nazis won World War II, Joseph Kennedy is their Quisling President and their rule is ruthless. Any dissent is severely punished and the world is split into two sections, the western section ruled by Germany and the eastern section ruled by Japan. The difference is that shortly after the fall of France; Generalissimo Franco entered the war on the side of the Axis and allowed Germany to take Gibraltar, closing the western Mediterranean to Allied shipping. This also allowed the German forces to cross into North Africa and sweep through the entire continent. Forced to send their ships all the way around the bottom of Africa, England then sued for peace. It was a harsh one and with the added power, the Germans were able to easily defeat the United States before it could rearm and make a fight of it.
While this scenario is ridiculous, there is more than a grain of truth to the premise that the actions of Franco had a significant effect on the course of the Second World War. Had he succumbed to the cajoling and threats of the Nazis, the war would have lasted much longer. The fall of Gibraltar would have been a disaster for the British, and there is no way that they could have retaken it without a titanic struggle. The German armies could then have easily crossed into Spanish Morocco and the allied invasion of North Africa would have been bloodier if not impossible.
This book describes the actions of the major players of the time. Hitler is portrayed as the combination of bullying maniac and flatterer that he was. His uncontrolled flatulence is also mentioned several times. Franco is most likely overplayed; he is depicted as a kind and gentle man who is the shrewdest leader during the war years. While Franco was shrewd, you must not forget that his forces were often quite brutal during the years of the Spanish Civil War. While he may have been kind to his family and understanding of the ambitions of his underlings, he did not hesitate to order the deaths of those who were on the opposite side of the political fence.
I consider this to be one of the best books of historical fiction that I have ever read. Despite some of the overstatements it makes some very significant historical points. First, Franco was not a Fascist of the Hitler/Mussolini mold. He was a Spanish patriot who did not hesitate to use the German and Italian soldiers to win his war. Franco also never truly believed that the Axis would win the war, although he did consider it likely that the war would end in some form of draw between Germany and the Soviet Union.
This book describes his machinations as he struggles to maintain a middle ground between the Allies and Axis. Franco was the only leader who directly faced the bullying tactics of Hitler and his gang of thugs and was not intimidated. Finally, note that Franco also did a great deal to aid Jews attempting to flee Europe. Spanish passports were issued to many of the Sephardic Jews with ancestral roots in Spain. Franco continued this policy even after the Nazis learned of it and increased their level of threats.

I am happy to recommend a book "Hitler stopped by Franco" by Jane and Burt Boyar. If you like history and you are willing to look at the past with fresh eyes in an objective way, if you have rational doubt about the official history that the media has spoon fed us, you would love this book. This book is a very good read. It is a kind of documented historical novel. It is about Franco's ability to avoid Hitler's ambitions. He kept Germany out of Spain and also Spain out of World War II. This book contains several letters between Hitler and Franco that give an idea about Franco's strategy.

Also in this book, the authors mentioned that Franco opened Spanish borders to Jews fleeing Nazis. He was the only leader to do this at that time. And he saved 60.000 people life.

Unfortunately there is strong resistance to any information that shows Franco in a positive way. But in this book the authors interview people who knew Franco and were members of the Franco's government at that time.

I really enjoy this book and heartily recommend it. I am a Spaniard. I am a history lover. And the perception that history has of Franco is interesting to me. But sometimes it bothers me.
Francisco Franco is unforgivable to the intellectuals and politicians of the left. He was an Anti - communist. But he was not only this; but also was victorious against communists in the Spanish Civil War.
This prejudice against Franco is not good if you want to take an impartial look at World War II. The Spanish neutrality played a very important issue during the war.
It does not matter if you like or dislike Franco; the truth is that he stopped Hitler.

Obviously, Franco repressed the leftist and sometimes he executed them. But Franco never proposed the extermination of any segment of the population. He maintained Spanish independence, preserved Spanish lives and created the base of a future democracy.

Compare this record with F.D. Roosevelt, for example.

1- He refused to allow Jewish refugees in to the Unite States
2- He shipped to concentration camps innocent Americans of Japanese descent.
3- More than 400.000 Americans died fighting in the war.
4- Plus millions of civilians that were killed in the nuclear bombings
5- He replaced the Nazi tyranny with a homicidal communist Russia in half of Europe, plus fifty years of terrible Cold War.

In that context. Who was a better leader Roosevelt or Franco?

About the weakness of the book. Sometimes the way that the characters talk in this book is unreal. But the authors' intentions are to give us a huge amount of historical information. The conversations made suffer but the historical background is perfect.

As an American, I knew nothing about Francisco Franco, save that he was a dictator and a contemporary of Hitler and Mussolini. This book reveals that Franco was not of the same character of those two men.

Franco saved Spain from a Soviet backed communist revolution in the Spanish Civil War. He helped up to 40,000 Jews escape Hitler's concentration camps. And he stopped Hitler from marching through Spain, taking Gibraltar from the British, closing the Mediterranean Sea, maintaining control of the Middle East and North Africa (and their abundant natural resources), and making Europe impenetrable to any Allied invasions.

Even under threat of invasion, Franco stood up to Hitler. He warned him that any Nazi invasion of Spain would be resisted with guerilla warfare, a form of warfare invented by the Spanish. 20 Wermacht divisions waited at the French-Spanish border for Hitler's order to invade, but the order never came.

Finally, Operation Torch, the allied invasion of North Africa, cut the Nazis off from vital oil and mineral supplies, opened the door for an invasion of Italy, and forced Hitler to spread his forces over three fronts (Normandy, Russia, and Italy); without Francisco Franco, none of this would have been possible.

Francisco Franco was shortchanged by history, due to communist propaganda unwittingly spread by the U.S. news media. He was not a ruthless man like Hitler and Mussolini; he was the unsung hero of the Spanish Civil War and World War II. Finally, the truth about this brave man has been revealed.

Documented historical fiction. Fiction only because it read like a short novel, with suspense, intrigue, political twists... all the delicacies to make a good and fast read.

Documented for sure, just check it out and see all the extra documents in the last pages, the recorded audio-conversations, etc that were used to compile the information here. Authentical 100%.

Historically relevant, very important stuff. Literally Franco saved more than 60,000 Jews during WWII from going to the extermination camps. This needs to be told. We can't say the same about many people during those days: the Jews were prevented from returning to their ancient land in Palestine by the British, and were thus retained for the gas chambers.

The book makes for a good picture of the whole European situation in those turbulent times. No need to be an expert on historical issues. Just plain facts tell it all, and here they are. Judge for yourself.

"Little" Franco was the cleverest political mind of his time. Amazing how he played the Allies against the Axis, just to keep his beloved country out of another war. He made us avoid the communist Iron Curtain for 75 years. We didn't share a dollar of the Marshall Plan, we lived poor -blessed be the poor- but in peace, and no country invaded us. Can't say the same for the rest of Europe. He saved lives. If that is a bad thing, then he is guilty. The sad thing is that one would have to say this today, running the risk of being "stigmatized" as fascist.